NATIONAL PERSPECTIVES; Merging the Old With the New In a Washington Suburb

By C. J. HUGHES

Published: January 28, 2007

THE old section of this city in Prince George's County, built by the federal government for affordable housing during the Depression, is not a gated community. Yet the way Phillip Payette describes it, it might as well be.

''I don't have to leave too much,'' said Mr. Payette, a self-employed illustrator who works from his home, a 1937 brick town house with a slate roof. ''But I don't like to go too far anyway.''

A glance at his surroundings may explain this homebody tendency. From his door, an oak-lined path curves past a row of well-kept attached homes, to a small commercial center where he can shop, see movies or swim. Nearby, farmland, reached past parks and ponds, offers dirt roads for rides on his mountain bike.

Even though Capitol Hill is 12 miles away, and the city border of Washington even closer, here it is leafy, walkable and clean, evoking the European-style ''garden city'' that it was built to resemble.

Yet, as much as old Greenbelters praise their neighborhood, they criticize the very un-Greenbelt way their city has allowed the haphazard development of some of its land.

Shopping centers like the Beltway Plaza Mall have replaced tobacco farms and forests, and the roads that lead to them, like Kenilworth Avenue, are frequently clogged with traffic. So is Interstate 495, the Beltway, which roars nearby.

To make matters worse, crime is also a problem. With about 22,000 residents, Greenbelt had 158 reported robberies and 247 stolen cars in 2006. Most of those incidents, police records show, took place at Springhill Lake, a 2,900-unit building that is among the East Coast's largest apartment complexes.

Now, in a city where us-versus-them tensions already run high, old Greenbelters are bracing for a wave of newcomers, courtesy of two developments, whose combined total will almost double the number of homes in the city.

For the first project, a $750 million plan from the Apartment Investment Management Corporation calls for tearing down Springhill Lake, a 157-acre property that the developer already owns, and replacing it with 5,800 homes and 10,000 square feet of commercial space. Around 35 percent of the units will be owner-occupied and the rest will be rentals, according to the developer.

The second, Greenbelt Station, is a $2 billion proposal from Metroland Development for 2,200 homes and 2.7 million square feet of commercial space across a 130-acre lot that is now mainly a gravel pit and parking lots. The development will also abut a train station that serves lines of Washington's Metro and MARC, Maryland's commuter train.

''You can live, work and shop there,'' said Walter H. Petrie, the chairman of Petrie Ross Ventures, which is a partner in Metroland Development. ''We're basically building a new town.''

To do so, Mr. Petrie and his architects said they studied old Greenbelt. Its collection of homes and shops, separated with bands of greenery, has design elements in common with a modern ''lifestyle center,'' with its open-air commercial districts, central squares and small parks. Mr. Petrie is currently building four other lifestyle centers in Maryland, he said.

Greenbelt Station will also emphasize pedestrians over cars, featuring wide sidewalks lined with benches and plantings.

That developers found inspiration so close to their work site is a coincidence not lost on planners. ''One of the best examples in the country of a walkable development is right across the street,'' said Chad Williams, the planner coordinator for Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, which must approve both development proposals. ''It's cyclical how the older ideas rise again.''

In both projects, lighting will play a major role. While the glare can't be too harsh, developers said, it also must be bright and direct enough to deter criminals. This is of particular concern in Springhill Lake. Lighting choices will be weighed seriously so the new complex doesn't have as many shadowy, trouble-prone corners as the current one, said Patti Shwayder, a senior vice president for the Apartment Investment Management Corporation.

''The security of our buildings is very important to us,'' she said.

In comparison to its neighbors, old Greenbelt, with 1,800 units, is small. About half of the units along its fishhook-shaped plot of land are owned by a co-op, which bought them from the federal government in the early 1950s. Recent listings put their prices at $210,000 to $315,000 for two-story homes with 1,000 square feet.

In addition, for a fee of about a $400 a month, maintenance workers will empty trash cans, trim hedges and patch roofs.

Scattered among them are rentals, built in the 1960s, and single-family homes that went up in the 1990s.

Despite the effect that thousands of new residents could have on their neighborhood, old Greenbelters generally support the two new projects.

For its part, Greenbelt Station will contribute ball fields, a community center and a pool to the city (promises that resulted from an eight-year battle, including a lawsuit).

And if Springhill Lake's crime-prevention tactics pay off, residents say, it will be an improvement on the original.

''It's better to have owner-occupied units than the rentals, which attract more transients,'' said Sylvia Lewis, the co-op's president, who has lived in the same two-bedroom house since 1968. ''It will be better.''

To hedge her bets, though, this fall, Ms. Lewis started the Greenbelt Community Foundation, which will provide grants of $500 to $2,500 for local not-for-profit groups working to improve the city, in line with old Greenbelt's utopian values, she said

''Our ideals are very fragile,'' Ms. Lewis said, ''and they have to be strengthened with every new generation.''

Greenbelt isn't the only Roosevelt-era planned neighborhood facing development pressure. Greenhills, Ohio, which was also built in 1937, faces perhaps a more severe threat.

In the last few years, developers in Greenhills have torn down 20 of the neighborhood's original 700 homes to make way for larger ones, said Deborah Mills, president of the Greenhills Historical Society, which opposes the teardowns. Unlike the homes in Greenbelt, those in Greenhills are owned by the town, which can decide their fate.

''They've torn down the International style homes and replaced them with ones that would fit on the South Carolina shore,'' Ms. Mills said.

In some ways, controversy has followed these ''green'' enclaves since Rexford Guy Tugwell, head of President Roosevelt's Resettlement Administration, dreamed them up as a way to offer families state-of-the-art rental housing, close to major cities, where unemployed adults might find work. (Greenhills is outside Cincinnati, while Greendale, a third such community, is a suburb of Milwaukee.)

Ardent free-market capitalists criticized the government's involvement in the real estate business. The $10 million price to build Greenbelt was also called expensive.

Local Maryland farmers even worried that the workers for the project would steal their apples, according to Jill St. John, curator of the Greenbelt Museum.

Michael Sorkin, a New York-based architect who grew up in Washington, has included elements of garden cities like Greenbelt in his work for cities in the United States and abroad.

For him, the New Urbanist trend, which favors highly compact developments that resemble urban downtowns, owes a debt to neighborhoods like Greenbelt, which efficiently uses its space, he said.

''The urban crisis of the moment is sprawl,'' he said, ''So I'm glad that the idea of the garden city has not yet run its course.''

Photos: BRACING FOR NEWCOMERS -- The old section of Greenbelt, Md., includes the original town square, above left, and affordable housing built by the federal government, above right. A new development will replace the 157-acre Springfield Lake, right. (Photographs by Steve Ruark for The New York Times)